


There's a Certain Inevitability to It

by anxiousAnarchist



Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-15
Updated: 2011-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-23 18:29:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/253527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anxiousAnarchist/pseuds/anxiousAnarchist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You all end up living together, after the whole thing ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's a Certain Inevitability to It

You all end up living together after the whole thing ends.

(And it's weird, isn't it, how your life is so clearly divided into Before Sburb and After Sburb, like they're two different lives, entirely. Two different universes, that never collide.)

It doesn't start out like that. At first, it's just you and Dave and Vriska (and man, did that leave to some shouting matches) renting a respectably cheap apartment in the student ghetto, splitting rent and packs of ramen. You and Vriska hold long Nic Cage marathons in the living room and Dave pisses off all the people in the rest of the tenants in the three story house with his ill beats.

Terezi starts coming over nearly every night on the pretense of flarping sessions with Vriska, and you hear them cackling sometimes, in Vriska's room, over the clatter of dice and Terezi's cane. But then she starts sticking around to draw over pictures in magazines with Dave, occasionally snorting the cherry scented markers, even though you tell her that that's "super dangerous, Terezi!!!" Nights with Vriska and early mornings with Dave all blend together and before you know it it's been a week since she's slept at her own place.

Eridan just shows up one morning, pathetic and reeking of vodka and completely soaked through from last night's thunderstorm, blubbing about how Feferi "broke my glubbin heart, i'll nevver heal, i swear to gog." Dave wants to kick him back out onto the streets but a couple of wheedling monologues later you manage to convince him that it'll be okay if Eridan sleeps it off on the couch, just this once, I promise!!

He never leaves. No one's surprised, least of all you, and the others put up with him because he's looser with his money than his quadrants, and so once in a while the four of you get to eat food that doesn't actually come out of a can.

It's just you four for a while, Dave convincing Eridan that no, really, that's his share of the rent, of course they're splitting it evenly; Vriska plotting new stages in her Egderp Self-Improvement Masterplan, Terezi drawing on the walls. It's early in the semester, when everything seems pleasantly malleable, before your grades all go down the toilet and before parties start to get old. You're all still going to classes. You're all still seeing things as new opportunities.

\---

Rose comes on one of her weekly inspections of the apartment ("Honestly, John, they're not inspections. Can't a person visit her very good friends in a social setting without aspersions of ulterior motives being cast? Frankly, I'm hurt.") and you're both sipping tea at the card table in the kitchen, when she casually mentions that her mother's cut her off.

"What do you mean, cut you off??" you ask.

"I mean exactly what it sounds like I mean," she says, languorously twirling a teaspoon through the contents of her mug. "She has ceased to pay for my accommodations, or to allow me to reside in her house. She has set me adrift in the sea of adulthood, if I am to use her terms."

Rose is looking away from you, and if you were to attempt to use her psycho-whatsits on her, you'd say she's more upset by this than she's letting on. "I'm being evicted on Thursday, though I'm sure I'll be able to procure some means of paying rent, or an alternative living situation, by then."

You pluck the spoon from her hand, and take the teacup away from her. You put horseradish in the bottom, anyway (you simply cannot help yourself, you are the pranking master.) "If you wanted to stay here, you could've just asked!" you say, and she smiles a little, maybe.

\---

Rose moves in, and insists, with the sort of Lalonde-Strider steeliness that you, poor friendleader that you are, are helpless against, that you should share a room with Dave, and bequeath your room to her instead. Dave's up for this idea, even though you're pretty sure he and Terezi are in some sort of weird ironic relationship.

You construct a set of bunkbeds (as a form of satire, Dave assures you), and you end up with the top one because you've always liked being up high, and anyway, if you want you can always do the windy thing to get up there.

Of course, wherever Rose is, Kanaya's sure to follow. You don't even think they plan it, really, she's just there one morning, her long green skirt dropping to the floor, her elegant head bent over the toaster.

"Uh, hi, Kanaya," you say.

She just smiles at you with her unnaturally white teeth, grabs the bagel out of midair as it bounces out of the toaster, and heads back to Rose's room. You hear the door lock shut after her.

\---

Everything after that becomes a bit of a blur. October rushes by and Aradia and Sollux and Feferi all arrive at once, some sort of interpersonal relationship threeway pile up. It's funny watching the different emotions Eridan's face cycles through as he sees the three come in, and you're sort of glad that Aradia and Sollux are there, because otherwise you'd have to put up with Eridan's frankly stalkerish obsession with her on your own.

Feferi felt bad about leaving Eridan all alone, and Sollux wouldn't dare leave her alone with Eridan, and Aradia and Sollux were still a bit attached at the hip, so that was that. You don't even ask, really, if they're moving in, just clear some space on the floor and try and snatch some of the more comfortable blankets from the hive of scum and iniquity that is the Scourge Sister's headquarters (many signs are plastered on their door to this effect, "K33P OUT!!" written in alternating red and blue letters), despite the girls' protests.

Sollux and Feferi end up making a pile in one of the larger closets (you've tried to keep things separated by gender, but honestly, that's starting to get a little silly and you can feel the inevitability of this turning into a huge sloppy makeouts space circling round you slowly and anyway Sollux scares you maybe just a little bit) and Aradia slumps herself into one of the worn out armchairs in the living room ("it's perfectly reas0nable, j0hn. All the space I need.") and Dave starts playing his music a little louder, to drown out Eridan's increasingly pathetic solo feelings-jam sessions where he cries out to the cruel, cruel universe that has deserted him.

The noise complaints from the neighbors escalate. Your landlord's starting to get a little suspicious. This can't last forever, perhaps, maybe.

\---

You're all marathoning Tarantino movies one cold November day. Vriska's disappointed at first at the complete absence of Nic Cage, but she's starting to warm up to the Bride's sword-slinging ways when Jade knocks on the back door, Karkat reluctantly in tow.

"I didn't want to miss out on the fun!" she said, hauling in a suitcase and the stubby grey haired alien. "Besides," she pauses for dramatic effect, "I already knew this was going to happen!"

Karkat just rolls his eyes and plops down next to you on the couch, grabbing the packet of Twizzlers out of your hands. "So what egregious piece of the disgrace that is human cinema did you pick out today, Egbert?" he asks.

You know this is his way of saying "I'm happy I'm here." You know that he was desperate to leave his old place, his overpriced apartment with the douchey roommates and the black mold and the leaks in the roof that always ended up right over his head. And you know he can't say things like that, because Karkat seems to believe that by expressing a positive emotion about something he'll actively call down destruction upon it.

You see Terezi and Rose sort of nod to each other, and dismiss themselves downstairs to "take care of some things," and when they come up forty-five minutes later they've somehow convinced the occupants of the floor below to move to another building. You don't want to know how they've made this happen, and you really don't want to think about what life might be like if these two become a permanent team.

Jade must've called Nepeta and Karkat must've used his weird moirail telepathy or something (troll romance is weird, you don't know, okay!!) to talk to Gamzee, because the next morning the last four trolls show up.

The next two days are cramped, as the people below you hurry to move out (oh gosh, you hope Rose didn't enlist some sort of dark terrors to convince them) and everyone else hurries to move in. You gentlemanly give up your room to Jade (and Nepeta and Equius and Eridan), and you and Karkat sleep in the hallway. You told him there was extra space in Vriska's room, but he looked sort of scared at the prospect.

\---

Terezi and Dave call the first room in the new space ("FOR OUR 3L1C1T X3N3OLOG1C4L R3L4T1ONS," Terezi says, though you wish she hadn't) and you spend the whole morning moving Dave's turntables down a flight of stairs while trying to come up with the best stairs-related jokes. Before you can even get a word in edgewise, Jade and Nepeta and Equius have grabbed another room, and Vriska's conned Tavros into sharing with her, somehow, though you don't know how long that'll last. You try to ask Gamzee where he'd like to stay, but he seems to be happy just chilling on the couch, so you leave him be.

Eridan and Sollux end up sharing Vriska and Terezi's old room, though when you ask Karkat if it's one of those weird hate-date things, he just rolls his eyes at you. Feferi, on the day forever known as The Great Moving Day, grabs Aradia and squeals, "I'm so happy we're going to be roommates!" and Aradia just sort of rolls her eyes and smiles.

You give Karkat the bottom bunk out of the generosity of your own heart and also because he's way too short to be up somewhere that high.

"I'm not that short, Egbert," he says. "I'm like three inches shorter than you."

"Whatever," you say, tossing his clothes into a dresser drawer. "Jeez, do you ever wear anything besides grey and black?"

"None of your business," he says.

Oh man, you are totally going to get Rose to knit him a sweater, a big bright red one. Maybe one with little Christmas trees on it. It's almost December, after all.

"Thanks," Karkat mutters, and you finish emptying out his suitcase.

"What?"

"I said thanks, fuckass!" he says, and clears his throat. "Don't make me say it more than once. You're the shitty glue that holds this shitty weird group together. I'm pretty sure half of us would be dead or living in the gutter right now, if it wasn't for your stupid face and your ability to kind of suck people in with your weird stupid optimism."

You are pretty sure this is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to you. You are almost certain that this is the nicest thing Karkat's ever said to anyone, ever, and you can kind of see him looking at the ceiling now, as if his assertion of your goodness is going to draw lightning bolts and poisonous spiders to your head.

Before he can take it back or yell at you or something you give him a hug, which is kind of awkward because seriously, he's like two feet shorter. You're pretty sure his feet leave the ground. "Wow, thanks Karkat," you say.

"Seriously, don't ever mention it again. This is physically painful in a whole spectrum of ways. This whole thing is so very weird."

You have no idea what he means. Everyone's finally home.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the sporadic application of typing quirks, tried to leave them in only where I thought they helped to carry across the dialog. This is an idea I kind of like, but I feel like there's a lot more that could be done with it than I did here. Also, in case it wasn't clear in the story, they're all supposed to be approximately college aged.


End file.
